Posts Tagged ‘tech’

Venture-capital firms are taking stiff measures to survive a tough fundraising environment and lackluster returns, including gutting their partnerships, slashing their fund sizes and refocusing their investment areas. Take Ignition Partners, for example, formed amid the tech boom in 2000 by several former Microsoft Corp. and McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. executives. While the Seattle venture-capital firm raised around $1.2 billion over the past 12 years, it didn’t produce a consistent string of startup hits. So when it asked investors last year for money for another venture fund, the firm got the cold shoulder. Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Shares of Google are on an upswing Friday, hitting a new high for the company of $775.32. That’s up 2.26 percent from the day’s opening price of $758.20. The company’s previous high was $774.38 in October. Google seems to be benefitting from broader bullishness as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 14,000 for the first time since 2007 based on the latest U.S. jobs report. Google beat expectations (well, mostly — Motorola complicated things ) with its fourth-quarter earnings report on Jan. 22. And the tech sector overall is having a good earnings season, with strong reports from Qualcomm , Facebook , Yahoo and Apple , among others. The company also submitted a proposal to the European Commission about antitrust concerns yesterday. As we reported, a source familiar with the content of the submission said it was only marginally stronger than the deal Google and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced to a month ago. Put together, that could mean Google is likely to scoot away from the threat of major regulatory battles on multiple fronts. Google also said today that it had created a €60 million fund to support digital publishing innovation in France as part of the resolution of its disputes with French news sites

Shares of Google are on an upswing Friday, hitting a new high for the company of $775.32. That’s up 2.26 percent from the day’s opening price of $758.20. The company’s previous high was $774.38 in October. Google seems to be benefitting from broader bullishness as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 14,000 for the first time since 2007 based on the latest U.S. jobs report. Google beat expectations (well, mostly — Motorola complicated things ) with its fourth-quarter earnings report on Jan. 22. And the tech sector overall is having a good earnings season, with strong reports from Qualcomm , Facebook , Yahoo and Apple , among others. The company also submitted a proposal to the European Commission about antitrust concerns yesterday.

Amid wide-ranging discussion of U.S. immigration reform — including a set of bipartisan principles introduced this week and a speech by President Barack Obama on the issue today — tech companies are particularly optimistic about a bill introduced this morning that is focused on highly skilled workers. The Immigration Innovation Act , proposed by Senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Chris Coons, D-Del., would increase the H-1B visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000 and establish triggers for more visas in response to market demand. It would also loosen green card rules for people who are dependents of visa recipients and people with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math from U.S. universities. Early criticism of the bill has targeted the fact that it is a “ piecemeal change ” rather than comprehensive reform, but it’s possible that it could be included in future broad legislation, which hasn’t been proposed yet. But tech leaders were quick to praise the bill, with companies such as Intel , Hewlett Packard and Google and industry groups issuing statements this morning specifically in support of the Immigration Innovation Act, which has already been nicknamed I-Squared. The bill “is a significant step forward in ensuring that the U.S. economy has the workforce and intellectual capacity it needs to enhance innovation, spur job creation and improve our economy,” said HP VP of global government relations Gregg Melinson. “The current focus on immigration reform presents the best opportunity we have seen in years to make needed fixes to the employment side of the immigration equation,” wrote Intel government relations director Peter Muller. Though his most closely watched remarks were about undocumented immigrants, Obama spoke specifically to the tech industry, saying that one in four high-tech companies was started by an immigrant.

The rental prices in San Francisco and the traffic on 101 might give you the feeling the tech industry is in a bubble time, yet again. But not everything in tech is healthy. U.S. venture capital just had a down year, for one thing. That’s in large part because dollars dedicated to new funding in biotech and cleantech fell significantly in 2012. Overall, VCs put $26.5 billion in 3,698 U.S. deals in 2012, a decrease of 10 percent, according to the new MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Biotech investment dollars dropped 15 percent in 2012 and cleantech investments 28 percent. There were fewer first-time fundings for biotech and medical device startups than any year since 1995. Still, venture capital was flowing quite normally to software companies. Not only was that the single largest investment sector in 2012, investments grew 10 percent to $8.3 billion, an 11-year high. If you slice all the categories, including those above, to look at companies whose businesses are on the Internet (that’s 25 percent of total U.S. venture capital dollars), investments were down five percent to $6.7 billion. But still, 2011 had been a record year for Internet funding, so that’s the second-highest total since 2001.

“Something Ventured: Risk, Reward, and the Original Venture Capitalists” is a documentary that celebrates — pretty much without a lot of criticism — the very first venture capitalists who were behind the tech giants launching companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco, Atari and Genentech. “Something Ventured” is being aired starting in January on public television stations nationwide. The film — which premiered at SXSW last year — focuses on the key VCs, including investor Arthur Rock, Kleiner Perkins’ Tom Perkins, Sequoia Capital’s Don Valentine and New Enterprise Associate’s Dick Kramlich. It’s full of great stories from them and others, such as remembering the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’s proclivity to not worry too much about showering. And there are some tasty quotes, too: Perkins: “I don’t know how to write a business plan. I can only tell you how we read them. We start at the back, and if the numbers are big, we look at the front to see what kind of business it is.” Rock: “Steve Jobs is a national treasure. He is so visionary, and so bright. I had to fire him, though.” Valentine: “I’m not interested in entrepreneurs who will do it our way

As anyone who’s ever gotten wrapped up in an online-commenting flame war knows, the Internet doesn’t have the best reputation for resolving disputes. Too often, the discussion doesn’t stray far from “I’m right!” versus “No, I am!” But conflicts arise online all the time, as Colin Rule knows. The “online dispute guy,” as his coworkers once called him, cut his tech teeth at eBay and PayPal, where he led the group that stepped in when buyers and sellers clashed. Now, Rule has spun off from eBay to become the CEO of Modria, one of a slew of organizations trying to solve more and more types of disputes online. Modria launched Monday with $1.25 million in seed funding, with The Wall Street Journal also reporting that the company is seeking about $4 million in its Series A round.

While Americans geared up for Election Day coverage on Monday evening, much of Silicon Valley was glued to a different channel. It was the premier of “ Start-Ups: Silicon Valley ,” the Bravo-produced reality show which follows a group of twentysomethings through the trials of tech entrepreneurship. It’s been the hot topic of the technorati for months, all of whom were eager to see just how drastically wrong a big cable network would portray the tech scene. Bravo didn’t disappoint. I spent the evening at one of the many Bay Area viewing parties with a group of tech reporters, entrepreneurs and other industry folk. Like any subculture enamored with itself, we took great joy in watching what amounted to something everyone expected: Strings of tech buzzwords. Engineers reciting equations amid kegstands. Waxing philosophically over Valley “ecosystems” while poolside. In essence, a laughable caricature of our own little world. The highlight, by far, was watching brother and sister duo Ben and Hermione Way pitch their start-up idea, “Ignite,” to angel investor Dave McClure. After Hermione takes a nap under McClure’s desk (yes, really), the siblings walk a skeptical McClure through their vision of a health app for smartphones. We’ve managed to get our hands on a copy of the pitch deck the two created for investors, which give some insight (but not much) into their company vision

Here’s yet another tech company with a press event lined up for the next couple weeks: Facebook is inviting reporters to “come see what’s new with Facebook Gifts” at the FAO Schwarz store in Manhattan Nov. 1. Facebook unveiled the ability to buy physical gifts for other users last month.

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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.